Archive for Shalimar books news

The Way I See It: A Gauri Lankesh Reader

Gauri Lankesh was an activist-journalist from Bangalore, Karnataka. She was shot to death outside her home in Rajarajeshwari Nagar on 5 September 2017. At the time of her death, Gauri was known for being a critic of right-wing Hindu extremism. She was honoured with the Anna Politkovskaya Award for speaking against Hindu extremism, campaigning for women’s rights and opposing caste based discrimination. A collection of her writings, The Way I See It: A Gauri Lankesh Reader, is now available from Shalimar. More information on the book herehttp://www.indianbooksuk.com/product/the-way-i-see-it-a-gauri-lankesh-reader/.

Below is an excerpt from an article published on the 29th May in the New Statesman, which is, in its turn, adapted from Kapil Komireddi’s Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India, (9781787380059) published in the U.K. by Hurst.

“Unlike Muslims who deviate from Muslim fundamentalists, the editor Vir Sanghvi wrote in the Hindustan Times in 2007, Hindus who “condemn the worst excesses” of Hindu nationalists “face no real danger”. For all the noise they made about the dangers of Hindu nationalism, affluent Hindus seldom radiated fear of saffron-clad supremacists. They saw their own faith as a form of terror indemnity against the savagery of men who slaughtered Muslims and Christians. This secret sense of security bred a smug complacency that blinded them to the danger staring them in the face. But, in September 2017— almost ten years to the date after Sanghvi’s assertion about the innocuousness of Hindu nationalists appeared in print—Gauri Lankesh, a Hindu journalist who did just that, was shot dead in an ambush outside her house.

The decade in between was the decade in which Modi became the undisputed leader of the Hindu-nationalist cause. If his election to the premiership energised Hindu supremacists, his silence as prime minister emboldened them. Gauri Lankesh, the scion of a distinguished family, edited a tabloid in Kannada that hardly anybody outside Karnataka read. She struggled to make ends meet and paid the bills by writing occasionally for English newspapers. But not for her the preening platitudes about the relative harmlessness of extremists who happened to be her co-religionists: in her work and her life, she was an unrelenting critic of Hindu supremacism and Modi’s project to recast India as a Hindu nation. Seemingly well-to-do and “progressive”, she was the archetypal “presstitute” despised by Modi’s myrmidons. Her killing, and the shock it induced, was an exhilarating spectacle for them. “A bitch died a dog’s death and now all the puppies are wailing in the same tune,” a businessman in Gujarat tweeted after she was pronounced dead. Another Twitter user rejoiced: “So, Commy Gauri Lankesh has been murdered mercilessly … Amen.” Such ravings would probably not matter—were it not for the fact that the accounts that published them were among those followed by the prime minister.”

The ethos and vision behind Shalimar Books (formerly Soma Books) was always more far reaching than exclusively being an Indian book and craft specialist in London. It was Independent Publishing Company (IPCO) that started in the 1940s which published two anti-imperialist magazines – The African and Colonial World and The Indian at Home and Overseas.

Outside Soma Books, Kennington, London – now Shalimar Books

They were later to be amalgamated into one magazine called Asia & Africa Review. It also published books, such as Richard Pankhurst’s book on Kenya. It was IPCO, the company which my father Anand Kumria took over from his father, that started importing Indian books and became the first book business to specialise in this area, long before anyone else came on the scene. IPCO also started to import Indic language books in the late 60s to cater to the needs of the immigrant community of Indian descent.

Considering the times in which Soma Books began (born in the 1980s when we were given the franchise to open a shop in the Commonwealth Institute), I see my parents as pioneers and visionaries for many of the kinds of aesthetics which became commonplace in museum shops and areas such as Covent Garden in the 90s, with particular reference to the fine art and handmade craft scene.

Minnie with Ceramic blue pottery craftsman, Rajasthan

It was my mother, Minnie Kumria, who laid the foundations for importing craft with her sister, Kamini Tankha, and her company Some Fine Things based in Delhi. Over two decades they worked closely with craftmakers, tribespeople and women’s organisations in India. This helped to provide a livelihood for the families of the traditional craftmakers and in many cases introduced tribal craft to the western market for the first time. It was what real fair trade looked like in action.

This was also a big part of Soma’s core values and I believe its enduring legacy. Through hard work and determination Soma Books established itself as a fixture at the Commonwealth Institute and realised the opportunity to represent India’s rich tradition of literature, fine art and craft to a western audience. The shop provided books and craft from the Commonwealth and on the Commonwealth to people living here in Britain and provided literature and histories of the Commonwealth countries.

The other dimension to Soma and later Shalimar’s beginnings which I feel is worth mentioning is that both of my parents have been very politically active throughout their lives and this I feel is reflected in the wide range of areas that are covered by Shalimar today. These include history, politics, gender studies, sexuality, yoga and health, religion and philosophy and originally focusing on Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, Soma always maintained a connection to the community, supplying books to schools and libraries across the UK. This expanded to include imported titles from the US to meet the growing demand for books with positive representations of race for young readers.

38 Kennington Lane, London SE11 4LS

Soma was also involved in publishing intermittently, from Indian fiction to dual-language titles for kids. Shalimar has brought this element forward, most recently collaborating and working on Across the Black Waters, and stocking and distributing the books of a number of progressive, independent Indian publishing houses.

Today, when people enter Shalimar Books in South London (where the shop has been since 1973/4), they are met with vibrant colours, embroideries and textiles, fine artwork, vintage handmade craft and, of course, books, all of which reflect almost 40 years specialising in South Asia and the subcontinent.

Inside Shalimar Books

I think people appreciate the complementary nature of having the books sitting alongside handmade craft and art. What makes Soma unique, I believe, is its ability to provide real insight on traditions at a grass roots level. Where do these beautiful things come from? Who made them? What’s the story behind them? In this way, Soma and now Shalimar have never been only a book or gift shop. It’s really an experience in culture and aesthetics and a showroom for Indian art in its many, many forms.

Shalimar Books will once again have a stall at the bookfair, exhibiting books by India’s leading radical, independent publishers. These include Leftword, Navayana, Orient BlackSwan, Three Essays Collective, Tulika Books, Women Unlimited and Yoda Press.

You can find details for the event here; https://londonradicalbookfair.wordpress.com/. We hope to see you there !

Two reviews of the Three Essays Collective title Of Gardens and Graves: Essays on Kashmir and Poems in Translation by Suvir Kaul.

As Huzaifa Pandit points out in the first review below, Of Gardens and Graves is “hard to classify into a genre”, comprising as it does essays, translations of poetry and a photo-essay.

Huzaifa Pandit reviews Of Gardens and Graves in The Luxembourg Review –

“To read Of Gardens and Graves is to witness the coming to life of Yeats’ famous line: “A terrible beauty is born”. It is to be reminded, if ever a reminder was needed, of the lingering pain that seeps slowly and eternally through the flooded scars of Kashmir, the scowl of the last half a century that darkens the fate of every subject, born under the auspices of its melancholic sky. It is hard to classify the book into a genre as it repudiates traditional hierarchies by refusing to be neatly categorized into one – it is simultaneously a memoir, a critical commentary, an anthology, collaboration, and a history all rolled into one, held together by a single source- Kashmir. An arbitrary classification of the book structure could be that the book comprises of three basic divisions: Essays, translations and photographs. On a reading, though, the narratives under each rubric just blend with each other, without any manifest hierarchy.”

“The juxtaposition and the parallel reading of poems written by Pandit and Muslim poets is a conscious move to see the shared language and poetry as the “affective glue that binds” them together even as they bear witness to “the destruction of the community”. Kaul does not perceive the suffering of the two communities – of one in the form of exile and its concomitant loss and hurt, and of the other, through militarized repression, systematic humiliation and denial of political agency – as opposed to each other, but as corollaries of the same phenomenon. The extraordinary sensitivity and scrupulousness with which he is able to navigate between the two sets of subjectivity, and not undermine either, despite being personally implicated as a Kashmiri Pandit, who also identifies as an Indian, is remarkable.”

We are extremely pleased to announce that at a meeting at the World Book Fair in New Delhi, Navayana have appointed Shalimar Books as their UK stockholding distributor.

About Navayana

Named after Dr B.R. Ambedkar’s socially and morally concerned interpretation of Buddhism, Navayana is India’s first and only publishing house to focus on the issue of caste from an anticaste perspective. Navayana launched their first titles in 2003.

The full story of the logo can be found on the Navayana website -, an abbreviated version is –

The logo of the publishing house is an ink sketch of two buffaloes kissing. The publisher, S. Anand, explains that the iconography comes from an excerpt from Aravind Malagatti’s autobiography in Kannada, Government Brahmana. It is a story about how the ideology of caste does not allow a dalit-owned she-buffalo in heat to mate with a he-buffalo owned by a landlord. For the cover art of the April 2003 issue of The Dalit, a journal run by the Dalit Media Network, Chennai, Anand approached the artist Chandru (G. Chandrasekaran) with this story. The logo is a close-up of the artist’s interpretation. [Wikipedia].

A unique event marking the centenary of a rare postcard written in the Great War by Kishan Devi to her father, Sepoy Sewa Singh, was held at the Pictorem Gallery in Walthamstow, London on 25th January. This postcard is possibly the only surviving example of its kind.

The card is postmarked 7 February 1916, and is written in reply to a letter home from Sepoy Singh, who was serving with Empire troops in the Sinai and Palestine campaign against the Ottoman Turks.

Postcard address

Kishan Devi, who was from a Panjabi background, had recently learned to read and write.

The postcard’s owner, Avtar Singh Bahra, spoke at the event and the contents were read in English translation and in Panjabi by the actor Pia Khan.

Dominic Rai, the organiser of the event, shared about the four-year project, Salt of the Sarkar, which tells the story of over a million soldiers from Undivided India who fought for Britain in the 1914-18 War.

Postcard text

Last year Shalimar Books, in association with Salt of the Sarkar, published a World War One centenary edition of Across the Black Waters, a classic novel by the great Indian writer Mulk Raj Anand (1905-2004) the father figure of modern Indian literature in English.

The novel follows the progress of the sepoys from their arrival by ship at Marseilles in September 1914 to the bloodstained wastes of the Western Front during the first winter of the War.

The project was launched in October 2014 in the House of Commons at a Commemorative Event chaired by Labour MP John McDonnell.

On 26th March, the new book by Reginald Massey, Shaheed Bhagat Singh and the Forgotten Indian Martyrs, is to be launched at Keats House, along with a special poetry reading.

The book will be launched by Professor Lord Desai of St. Clement Danes, and will be followed by poems commemorating martyrs, read in English, Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu. The readings will be compered by Dr. Padmesh Gupta, and the participants inlude India Russell, Sathi Ludhianvi and Pran Sharma.

If you wish to attending this event, please contact Divya Mathur at vatayanpoetry@gmail.com

Shaheed Bhagat Singh and the Forgotten Indian Martyrs by Reginald Massey

The launch is being held from 6.30 – 8.15 pm on Thursday 26 March 2015 at Keats House, 10 Keats Grove, London NW3 2RR. Nearest tube stations are Hampstead or Belsize Park.

Shalimar Books will be running a bookstall at the event, where the new book and other titles will be on sale.

More details about Shaheed Bhagat Singh and the Forgotten Indian Martyrshere.

Shaheed Bhagat Singh (28 September 1907-23 March 1931) was one of the most influential revolutionaries of the Indian independence movement. As a teenager he studied European revolutionary movements and was attracted to anarchist and Marxist ideologies. He was involved in the murder of British police officer John Saunders, and eluded efforts by the police to capture him. Soon after, he and an accomplice threw two bombs and leaflets inside the Central Legislative Assembly. He gained widespread national support when he underwent a 116-day fast in jail, demanding equal rights for British and Indian political prisoners. He was convicted and subsequently hanged for his participation in the murder.

Reginald Massey has written books on India on a variety of subjects ranging from history, culture and travel to classical music and dance.

We have a lot of exciting new books coming out at the moment, this blog post features just a few recent highlights.

Many more titles on a wealth of subjects are also available to buy online from our shop. We are the largest UK distributor of Indian books; we also supply to shops, libraries and schools – please contact us for more information.

Annihilation of Caste: the annotated edition

This historic and provocative text is extensively annotated in this edition, and comes with a wonderful introduction by Arundhati Roi in which she puts Ambedkar’s work in its historical context and explores how caste plays out in today’s India.

The Boatman

A fascinating account of a man’s rollercoaster ride on a journey of sexual discovery, which is also a moving story of his love affair for India. An intimate and intense exploration of city life in India in the 1980s.

This Side, That Side

This highly acclaimed, ground-breaking graphic anthology brings a fresh perspective to the much-explored theme of partition. These narratives are fascinating and moving explorations of the human effects of partition and people’s enduring curiosity about “the other side”.

Radical booksellers, publishers, artists and activists of all stripes are set to takeover the Bishopsgate Institute on May 10th. All three floors of this venerable establishment will host the London Radical Bookfair & Alternative Press Takeover 2014. With over 130 exhibitors, and 20 guest speakers, this will be a unique gathering of progressive readers, thinkers and doers, in a celebration of radical publishing and politics.

This free event is organised by the Alliance of Radical Booksellers (ARB), which formed in 2011 to raise awareness of the radical booktrade. The bookfair provides an annual opportunity to bring the UK’s radical booksellers together to meet in person with publishers and the reading public.

Award ceremony for two ARB book prizesThe bookfair also allows the ARB to award its two annual book prizes: the Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing and the Little Rebels Children’s Book Award. Shortlisted authors from the two awards will be giving talks and participating in panel discussions throughout the day as part of a programme which will culminate in the announcement of the winning titles by the guest judges in the Great Hall.

Talks and panel discussionsThere will be talks on all of the titles shortlisted for the Bread and Roses Award, with speakers including Rob Evans, Ben Griffin, Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, Barry Kushner, Katharine Quarmby, Andrew Simms and Imogen Tyler. The bookfair will also hear from the guest judges of the prize: editor of The F-Word blog Jess McCabe, associate editor at The Guardian Seumas Milne, and writer, philosopher and activist Nina Power.

There will be a panel discussion on the Little Rebels Children’s Book Award, which will be hosted by Wendy Cooling, guest judge and founder of the Bookstart programme, and will include shortlisted authors Deborah Chancellor, Gill Lewis and Geraldine McCaughrean. Another discussion will take place on the subject of radical children’s literature, with children’s authors Alan Gibbons and Catherine Johnson, Ann Lazim from the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education, and Kim Reynolds from the Institute of Education.

A discussion on ‘Radical Black and Asian Publishing: Legacies and Continuing Challenges’ will be chaired by Sukant Chandan and include Eric Huntley, co-founder of Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications, amongst other speakers.

In addition to these talks, there will be a virtual tour of the invaluable collection of radical materials at the Bishopsgate Institute, presented by resident librarian and archivist Stefan Dickers.

The London Radical BookfairThe London Radical Bookfair will be showcasing the depth and breadth of radical publishing in the UK by filling Bishopsgate Institute’s Great Hall with some fifty stalls from booksellers and publishers. There are currently other bookfairs dedicated to progressive titles, but they tend to focus on tightly defined political traditions. The aim of the London Radical Bookfair is to be a broad church that brings together these traditions and makes them accessible to a wider audience.

TheAlternative Press connection
This year, for the first time, the London Radical Bookfair has teamed up with Alternative Press (AP), whose extended family of writers and artists will be exhibiting and selling their self published comix, zines, art books, and prints in the Upper Hall. They will also share their expertise by leading workshops in print-making and book-binding. To celebrate the collaboration between the two fairs, AP artists have created a series of artworks inspired by the Bread and Roses shortlist, which will be on display throughout the day.

Shalimar will be displaying a selection of the Indian books that we distribute at the London Book Fair. These will be on Stand O 605, courtesy of our friends and colleagues from NCBA whose stand it is.

The selection includes books from Three Essays, Tulika Books, Women Unlimited and Yoda Press, including the highly acclaimed graphic narratives title This Side That Side.

This Side That Side – Restorying Partition created by Vishwajyoti Ghosh

We would be very pleased to welcome you to the stand, and discuss your requirements for Indian books. We work with leading publishers and distributors in India, enabling us to supply titles on all subjects from all regions of India.

Shalimar representatives at the London Book Fair are Anand and Melanie.